Posts tagged as:

corporate brand

Social Media Risks: Restoring trust when your brand mascot is a killer (whale)

by cv harquail on March 2, 2010

The challenge of being authentic on social media can be scary.

Many organizations are afraid of being ‘on’ social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where they (or their representatives) are accessible and active in real time. They worry that participating in real time on social media platforms will expose them as unthinking, out of touch or inauthentic.

Organizations worry how to find and translate their ‘corporate voice’ into an interactive human presence.

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When organizations take their first steps onto these social media platforms, they consider their various strategies, and how they could be represented by Brandividuals, celebrity CEOs, tweeting teams, or even their corporate brand mascots.

Brand Mascots on Twitter

Compared to the human alternatives, corporate mascots can look quite appealing. Many organizations already have brand mascots that represent their important products and/or their organization. These characters already have name recognition, brand equity, and the ability to trigger an emotional connection with their customer community.

Moreover, these corporate mascots can ’speak’ in a way that reflects the desired image of the brand, since there is no actual person or thing that it (also) needs to represent. As fake as we know they are, corporate mascots can create a very authentic organizational voice.

And, an added benefit is that these corporate characters and brand mascots never do anything embarrassing (like insider trading, or infidelity, or sock puppetry) that might besmirch the corporate brand. Thus, we have the Andrex Puppy, Travelocity’s RoamingGnome, and comparethemarket.com’s meerkat Alexsandr Orlove (pictured at left).

And then we have @Shamu. [click to continue…]

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Crafting Business Avatars: An Authenticity Exercise

by cv harquail on October 19, 2009

We all need to stop playing around with how we represent ourselves visually online, at least where work is concerned.

That’s what Gartner Consulting advises. They released a report last week proclaiming that Enterprises Must Get Control of Their Avatars. The animated avatars that an organization’s employees use when they participate as organization members inside virtual environments, as well as those cure little photos on Twitter, need to be proactively managed by the organization. Why? Because these avatars are representing the organization. They are affecting the corporate brand and reputation.

Business Avatars are an Important Trend

mad men avatars.jpgAs crazy as it might sound to worry about controlling avatars, avatars are becoming big business. The corporate avatar trend went public in 2007, when IBM established guidelines for how its employees would use avatars and participate in business situations in virtual worlds like Second Life.

You might not have realized that the use of avatars in business settings is growing. With the rise in online virtual meetings, virtual training & learning simulations, and virtual businesses, not to mention social media within and across organizational boundaries, business avatars are becoming more and more common. Simultaneously, the processes for adapting and crafting an avatar’s appearance and movement are becoming both more sophisticated and easier to use.

Since avatars are becoming more common and easier to individualize, there will be more and more variation across avatars representing any one company. What will all these different avatars do for the organization’s image, reputation, and brand? [click to continue…]

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